Ah, fuck it, I’m not writing an intro this year — does anybody actually read those? In any case, here are my ten favorite T.V. shows of 2019.
10. “The Righteous Gemstones” (Danny McBride)
Those who have been paying close attention to the output of the Rough House comedy collective as of late — a group comprised primarily of Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green — have no doubt noticed that the divisive roughneck humor that these boys are (in)famous for has taken on a more surreal and somewhat satirical shape in these last few years. Whereas “Eastbound and Down” was a largely self-contained tragicomedy about one horrible man’s descent into small-town irrelevance (and his eventual, cocaine-fueled resurrection), “Vice Principals” was a more prescient and disturbing undertaking: a deep-dive inside the tormented mindscapes of the spurned Caucasian male losers that dwell in certain undernourished pockets of America. “The Righteous Gemstones,” predictably, is no less topical. The trio’s third outing for HBO is a boisterous, often surprisingly poignant crime comedy about a family of greedy, backstabbing televangelists whose avarice and buffoonery posit them as accidental poster children for the Trump era. McBride is, once again, frighteningly convincing as a red-state hardass who is a slave to his worst appetites. What makes “The Righteous Gemstones” so indelible — even if it falls just a bit short of both “Eastbound” and “Vice Principals,” two of the most fearless small-screen comedies of the last twenty years — is its ambition and scope. In “Gemstones,” McBride and his cohorts create an entire world: one where mega-churches exist inside former Sears retail spaces, and where opposing congregations go to war with each other like well-armed Dixie crime families (there’s also an entire episode devoted to youth ministry outings and underground Satanic raves, but I guess it’s better that you see that one for yourself). The supporting cast is exceptional, with John Goodman’s scowling paterfamilias and Walton Goggins’ impish, conniving celebrity preacher emerging as series standouts. McBride helmed the sturdy hour-long pilot, but as is the case with all of Rough House’s output, the directorial DNA in “Righteous Gemstones” is simultaneously cohesive and distinct. David Gordon Green’s episodes are wily, loose-limbed, often experimental affairs, while Jody Hill, as always, is more comfortable going for painful laughs that stick in your throat. Throughout “Gemstones’” first season, the Rough House lads remain admirably uninterested in throwaway chuckles. This is a show that ultimately has more in common with brutal Joel and Ethan Coen burlesques like “The Ladykillers” and “Burn After Reading” than the admittedly funny blue-note insanity of “The Foot Fist Way.” In this case, that turns out to be a very good thing indeed.
9. “Chernobyl” (Craig Mazin)
I must admit, reader, “Chernobyl” was a show that I had a tough time getting through — and, frankly, this was only due in part to the astonishingly bleak subject matter and the unsentimental authorial hand deployed by creator and series director Craig Mazin. The first episode of this astonishing HBO miniseries is no doubt its weakest: a disaster movie in miniature that depicts the fallout of the infamous nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Power Plant in 1986. This weighty and portentous introduction is unfortunately marred by some dull expository dialogue and a few over-stylized passages (the prologue, however, is one of the more haunting scenes I’ve seen from this year in television, and it’s all the more chilling when you reach the end of the series and can evaluate its dramatic resonance in hindsight). Once you get past the show’s ruthlessly humorless tone and the inexplicable decision to employ British theater actors in the guise of Russian bureaucrats, “Chernobyl” reveals itself as a breathlessly intelligent and unashamedly fatalistic procedural, as well as an all-too-timely examination of the moral collapse that can occur when powerful elites willfully opt to keep a horrible truth hidden from the public eye. With each subsequent episode, “Chernobyl” got better and better, culminating in an unforgettable fourth episode where civilian draftees are ordered to infiltrate the contaminated Exclusion Zone and execute any infected or abandoned animals (dog-lovers will want to steer clear of this installment), and a final chapter that concludes with a bravura monologue given by Jared Harris’ morally beleaguered Soviet chemist Valery Legasov about how a lie can flourish within a corrupt ethical ecosystem until it is unequivocally accepted as truth. I understand those who are reticent to dive headfirst into “Chernobyl” — shit, it took me about a week just to get through the first two episodes. This is, without a doubt, one of the most austere and hopeless hourlong dramas that HBO has ever aired, rivaling the cinema of Laszlo Nemes (“Son of Saul,” “Sunset”) for its commitment to harrowing subjectivity. That said, I would argue that “Chernobyl” is practically essential viewing in 2019, when our civil rights are being violated on a daily basis and large-scale fabrication is just another obligatory part of the global discourse. Especially compared to hollow prestige failures like the egregious second season of “Big Little Lies” and the vacuous, “look at me” theatrics of the tedious Kids Aren’t Alright melodrama “Euphoria,” the sobering clarity of “Chernobyl” is its own reward. Nobody said indispensible drama had to be easy to swallow.
8. “Easy” (Joe Swanberg)
It makes sense why Joe Swanberg would want to partner with Netflix for something like “Easy.” Each season of Swanberg’s superlative comedy has offered the veteran mumblecore director an ideal platform for his shaggy, vignette-based style, as the show has chosen to loosely follow a loosely-connected group of Chicago urbanites as they date, sleep around, dream big, and stumble into an existence they never imagined for themselves. Who could have imagined that put-upon babysitter Annie (Kate Micucci) would end up a serial dater — or that she would eventually, gasp, find a suitable romantic partner? Did anyone predict that the professional aspirations of goofy, beer-brewing slacker Jeff (Dave Franco, naturally) would go up in smoke, leaving him with no other choice but to take a job at a rival brewery run by his former best friend? I guess it was only a matter of time before narcissistic comic book artist Jacob Malco (a revelatory Marc Maron) faced his own #MeToo comeuppance in the third season’s most wrenching and emotionally affecting chapter. Like Swanberg’s best work — including his “California Split”-indebted gambling farce “Win It All,” one of the funniest films of 2017, and “Digging for Fire,” his barbed examination of marital strife — “Easy” has a way of sneaking up on you and flooring you with the potency of its insights. It’s the rare behavior-based character comedy that actually finds new things to say in a T.V. landscape where that aforementioned genre seems to have aged well past its expiration date (for evidence: see “Transparent: Musicale Finale”). Even in its final batch of episodes, Swanberg finds time for new and fascinating characters. “Private Eye” is one of the looniest (and best) episodes of this season, following a deliciously dense low-rent P.I. as he attempts to go undercover at a BDSM party. “Number One Seller” unfolds like an early portrait of street realism from Josh and Benny Safdie, depicting the day-to-day hustle of a tireless but charismatic street vendor named Scrap. In episodes such as these, “Easy” shows us that it’s more than just the story of these flawed but fascinating people: it’s also the story of an entire city, one unmistakably fueled by the grit, gumption, and perseverance of its denizens.
7. “You” (Greg Berlanti, Sera Gamble)
Technically, the first season of “You” premiered on Lifetime in late 2018, but reader, I will admit that I caught up with this show in January of this year and I haven’t been able to shake it from my mind since (lucky for us, a new season arrives on December 26th). I guess that means I have to try and write about the multitude of things that this show makes me feel. The tonal liberty and sheer conceptual audacity of “You” is jaw-dropping in a way that only expands and intensifies from episode to episode. It’s one of the most brazenly entertaining shows to come around in years, and I venture that it might have the “Beavis and Butt-head” effect on some male viewers who may be so tickled by the show’s steady onslaught of wickedly over-the-top behavior that they won’t realize that the show is actually about them. The elevator pitch is as follows: picture a show about a deluded, narcissistic, psychotic incel with a self-serving voiceover and a warped view of the world as one big romantic comedy where he’s the decent guy trying to win the girl of his dreams. Then, imagine that what this actually looks like in the real world: stalking, gaslighting, murder, and an abundance of grotesquely funny dissections of the male ego. Then, finally, imagine that this creep is actually the “hero” of your story. That’s “You” in a nutshell. It’s a show that shouldn’t work on any level — and yet, somehow, it does, mostly due to dexterous, clever writing, a lack of pretense that occasionally flirts with soap-opera histrionics, and a pair of crafty, tongue-in-cheek lead performances that ground the show’s increasingly absurd procession of dramatic events even when they take the premise’s inherent ridiculousness to the knife’s edge of plausibility. Penn Badgley brilliantly weaponizes his smarmy, thoroughly vanilla ordinary-dude handsomeness as Joe: a certifiable sociopath who fancies himself “the last nice guy in New York,” and whose infatuation with the Elizabeth Lail’s would-be writer Guinevere Beck eventually reaches a fevered, borderline-operatic peak midway through the first season. This is a show that’s patently ludicrous in almost every way — as any show that features Lou Pucci as a vacuous trust-fund douchebag and John Stamos as a mellow, weed-puffing couples’ therapist is bound to be — and yet, in nearly every episode, “You” says terrifying, relevant things about the self-pitying mentality of the 21st century sensitive dude-bro: the kind of guy who sends poetry via text message, recycles woke quotables he read on Twitter, and excuses his lesser qualities by mentioning that he’s going to vote for Bernie Sanders. It’s a show so damn near perfect that it will make its female viewership want to delete all the dating apps off of their phones.
6. “Mindhunter” (Joe Penhall)
When it premiered on Netflix back in 2017, “Mindhunter” announced itself as a robust, if not exactly groundbreaking, entry in our current small-screen fascination with the grisly particulars of true crime. “Mindhunter” boasted an unimpeachable technical pedigree in its first season: top-tier production value and costume design, more than a few genuinely chilling narrative detours, and the assured directorial assistance of the great David Fincher, who is no stranger to the depraved inner lives of serial killers or the men and women who chase them. And yet, watching the first season, it often felt like “Mindhunter” lacked a pulse, or was squandering an opportunity to explore the knottier historical roots of American criminology. As a result, the show’s first season often felt like less than the sum of its admittedly gorgeous parts. That all changes in season two, in which the showrunners have reshuffled the deck and emerged with a batch of episodes that act as a veritable quantum leap from what came before. There are a few variables that factor into the drastic uptick in quality that “Mindhunter” benefits from in its sophomore season. While Jonathan Groff’s elusive FBI agent Holden Ford was painted as something of a wet blanket in the first season, season two shifts the focus to the gruff, taciturn Bill Tench (Fincher regular Holt McCallany, from “Alien 3” and “Fight Club”), who reveals himself an altogether more commanding and dynamic protagonist than his more milquetoast co-star. Fincher does some of his best work in years here (he directed the first three episodes), summoning the impeccably curated horrorshow tableaus of “Se7en” and the steely suburban gloom of his underrated meta-celebrity satire “Gone Girl.” He’s aided in no small part by contributing directors Andrew Dominik (“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Killing Them Softly”), who lends his fanciful Gothic eye to a series-best episode in which the Behavioral Science Unit pays a visit to none other than Charlie Manson (embodied here by Damon Herriman, who also played Manson in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” and does so here in a more convincing, far less cartoonish register), as well as T.V. vet Carl Franklin, who brings season two’s mini-arc about the Atlanta Child Murders to an imperiously grim close. “Mindhunter’s” decision to explore the ways in which marginalized communities deal with outsized acts of cruelty and violence also grants the proceedings an eerie timeliness that’s a new but welcome look for the show: season two, above all else, is a startling and unapologetically pessimistic rumination on how citizens deemed invisible to the general public can go missing without anyone so much as blinking an eye.
5. “Fleabag” (Phoebe Waller-Bridge)
Of all the shows on this list, it’s very possible that “Fleabag” might be the most hotly debated. “Fleabag’s” first season was a memorably serrated but ultimately unassuming affair: a black-and-blue character study about a self-imploding modern woman, incapable of self-love or loving others, that was ultimately as tight, concise, and controlled as its central character was unwound. The first season of “Fleabag” ultimately felt like a feature-length film split into six jaggedly poetic chapters: the revealing and, at times, uncomfortably candid tale of a person who’s addicted to surface level-pleasures and also completely inept at expressing genuine displays of emotion that don’t relate to irony or disdain. “Fleabag’s” caustic and tender second season is so terrific that I’m just a tiny bit disappointed that the show has come to a definitive close — and yet, after seeing how thoughtfully Waller-Bridge and series director Harry Bradbeer have constructed this second chapter, I practically can’t imagine what a third season would look like (in this case, this is a massive compliment). Much has been made of the “hot priest” from this season, and the scenes in which Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott’s empathic man of the cloth square off, trade barbs, or go at it in the carnal sense add fuel to the show’s already-raging fire. And yet, at its core, “Fleabag” is a show about loneliness — about how, at the end of the day, once you’ve brushed off your nagging sister, her shithead husband, your insincere, pompous mother-in-law, your harried father, and all the one-night-stands you’re too busy to call or text back, all you’re left with is yourself. The cutting honesty of “Fleabag” might be too much to take if this weren’t such a funny, soulful and well-crafted show, its witticisms honed to within an inch of their lives, with every performance executed at an unfathomably perfect pitch (Olivia Colman, playing Fleabag’s patronizing mum, and Brett Gelman, as Fleabag’s increasingly creepy and despicable brother-in-law, remain the highlights of an unfairly stacked ensemble). It’s no small wonder that Waller-Bridge has found herself attached to bigger, more illustrious projects after “Fleabag,” including a coveted gig doing rewrites up on the upcoming Bond flick, “No Time To Die.” And yet, one can only hope that in the shadow of “Fleabag,” this remarkably talented woman decides to offer us a glimpse at something as personal, original, and hysterically funny as what this show managed at its peak.
4. “Barry” (Alec Berg, Bill Hader)
Watching the second season of HBO’s scalding and ruthless black comedy “Barry,” I kept wondering to myself how much longer — or rather, for how many more seasons — the show’s creators could theoretically keep this train running. After all, Alec Berg and Bill Hader’s dark-as-night farce about a hitman with theatrical aspirations isn’t “Silicon Valley” or “Veep.” In other words, it’s not a show that follows a peerlessly-executed formula wherein its characters hatch plans, screw up, fall to pieces, and then get back together again before the season finale. The stakes don’t relate to national security gaffes or the squirmy particulars of working amongst socially maladroit losers. No, the stakes in “Barry” are life and death, and there were multiple points during season two where I worried that certain characters would be shuffled off their respective mortal coils. Granted, this is not a show populated by likeable human specimens. Henry Winkler’s Gene Cousineau is still vain and consistently self-congratulatory, even if his grieving over the horrible loss of his girlfriend allows us to feel more deeply for him than we otherwise might. Sarah Goldberg’s Sally Reed, meanwhile, is still the textbook manifestation of every self-obsessed, opportunistic L.A. striver we’ve all been unfortunate to run into at a Peet’s coffee shop. Alas, what’s partially brilliant about “Barry” in its second season is the warped moral spectrum it operates on: when the true villains of your show are heartless sociopaths, Chechen mobsters and abusive boyfriends, traits like vanity, neurosis, and an inability read the proverbial room are easier to forgive. “Barry” is more poised and confident in its second season, and the same is true of Bill Hader’s career-defining lead performance. In the show, both Hader and Barry are coming into their own: embracing their dramatic chops, and taking small but tangible steps towards leading something transcendent. In Barry’s case, our hero is attempting to permanently leave his career as a killer-for-hire in the rearview mirror. Alas, such things are easier said than done. “Barry” is also a stealthily insightful show about father figures and toxic mentors, which becomes apparent in Barry’s painfully one-sided relationship with Stephen Root’s Machiavellian monster Fuches, as well as Gene’s pitiful attempts to make amends with the grown son who wants nothing to do with him. It feels unlikely that “Barry” will continue for another two or three seasons, but if the shocking cliffhanger at the end of season two is any indication of where this show will go, then season three can’t come soon enough.
3. “Russian Doll” (Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler)
“Being a person is a fucking nightmare.” No kidding, friend. “Russian Doll,” an immaculate gallows mindfuck of a half-hour comedy about a disagreeable New Yorker who gets caught in a time-continuum loop that feels like “Groundhog Day” by way of Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” is many things to many people. It’s one of the most thematically daunting small-screen comedies in the history of the medium. It’s also an unsentimental and yet somehow poignant snapshot of big-city anomie, and perhaps the definitive showcase to date for its one-of-a-kind star, Natasha Lyonne. Above all else, though, “Russian Doll” — created by Lyonne and Amy Poehler, and also “Bachelorette” director Leslye Headland, who helmed the best episodes of season one — is about the nightmare of sentience. How wonderful it would be, for some of us, to simply tune out of life: then we wouldn’t have to worry about depression, bills, work, disappointing friends, thoughtless romantic partners, and all of the various indignities that ultimately comprise life in our plugged-in, tuned-out epoch. I’m making “Russian Doll” sound like a cynical slog: the kind of show that the douchebag philosophy major you went to college with might appreciate, or a nihilistic spiritual cousin to “Rick and Morty.” The truth is that “Russian Doll” is one of the more buoyant and imaginative comedies of the year: a show that defiantly re-imagines the visual and theoretical parameters of the 30-minute comedy from the feet up and fashions something daringly weird, and even potentially alienating, in its place. And what a magical actress Lyonne has turned out to be, channeling the spirit of Lenny Bruce and the Borsch Belt into a frighteningly funny manifestation of millennial malaise that has no peer from this year in television. “Russian Doll” gets stranger and more ambitious as its season progresses, and I imagine that alone will turn away some viewers just looking for a modest behavioral comedy set in the Big Apple. That would be a shame. This is one of the most brazen works of television art I’ve seen in years: an unapologetically cerebral seriocomic doodle about consciousness and the script of life that, in its touching final episode, arrives at a conclusion that reminds us that in spite of how inadequate some people can be, humanity is really all we have. The fact that the show manages to be genuinely poignant while nevertheless maintaining its nervy feminine edge and never dipping into saccharine waters is only one of the many miraculous things about it.
2. “Pen15” (Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle, Sam Zvibleman)
If you’re too old to remember the significance of what Pen15 meant in middle school, let me offer you a brief refresher: if you were an adolescent in, say, the early 2000’s, when “Pen15” the show takes place, someone might approach you at school and ask you if you wanted to be a part of the Pen15 club. You’d say yes, because who doesn’t want to be accepted by strangers at that age? At this point, the other person would inevitably draw the word “Pen” and the number “15 on your hand. The joke? You now have “penis” scrawled on the back of your palm. Hilarious? Humiliating? Maybe a bit of both? This alchemy is also a pretty damn accurate way of describing “Pen15,” a gaspingly funny and occasionally mortifying Hulu comedy about the slings and arrows of middle school life in the earlier half of the post-Y2K age. It is the first show I’ve ever seen to encapsulate, without missing a beat, the deluge of tiny triumphs and daily agonies that were part and parcel of the junior high experience during this very specific time in American history. It is as much of a period piece as “Catherine the Great” or “The Crown,” except viewers are rewarded with the rather excellent trade-off of substituting candelabras and gilded corsets for puka shells and spaghetti string tops. No show from this year was more uproarious or openhearted then “Pen15”: episodes where the characters trawl through the digital abyss of AIM chatrooms (the sound of dial-up internet warming up will no doubt induce a Pavlovian response in many millennial viewers), stay up late at night to watch a VHS copy of the Matt Dillon/Denise Richards-starring erotic thriller/trash masterpiece “Wild Things,” or get downright experimental at the school dance rank as some of the most memorably squirm-inducing T.V. moments of the year. I could go on and on about the virtues of this show: the writing, which captures the indifferent idiom of the Livejournal era without straining for any slapstick zaniness to the degree that it’s worthy of a chef’s kiss, the eerily precise attention paid to detail in regards to the costuming and set design, the fact that the show stars two grown women interacting with real-life teenagers while never coming across as creepy or condescending, etc. and so forth. However, “Pen15” simply wouldn’t work if it didn’t have a pair of raucous, mirthful, and infectiously good-natured lead performances at its center. With this show, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle have announced themselves as a pair of comic actresses to be reckoned with: their friendship is as warm, palpable, and compelling as “Pen15” itself.
- “Succession” (Jesse Armstrong)
Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the most tragically relevant series of 2019, the funniest and most depressing show ever made about the era of the Large Adult Son, a note-perfect dissection of nepotism and our modern-day political oligarchy, and the peak T.V. satire of the year, and maybe just of our era, period. “Succession” was already a very, very good show when it premiered in June of last year (it narrowly missed out on my number one spot last year, to “Atlanta: Robbin’ Season”). Somehow, it’s gotten even nastier, more biting, and just plain better in its nearly flawless sophomore season. Last season ended with a cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers, as a cocaine-hungry Kendall Roy — the most pathetic and somehow sympathetic of the Roy sons, played in a captivating and remarkably subtle performance by emerging star Jeremy Strong — led a hapless caterer on a mission for drugs that ended in the young man’s untimely death. Kendall managed to avoid consequences for this egregious mishap — because of course he did — but the event has shadowed him well into season two, where he’s become even more ruthless and closed-off from the world at large (in other words, more like his father). A lesser show may have devoted its second batch of episodes into excavating the unsavory details behind Kendall’s brush with death, but luckily for us, “Succession” is a more slippery and surprising show than that. I’ve heard complaints from some viewers that the show is populated by scummy, loathsome characters (true), or that the show exists as “lifestyle porn” for oblivious 1%’ers (objectively false). I pity those who need their T.V. characters to be as redeemable and squeaky-clean as, say, the characters on “The Good Place” (which is its own kind of masterpiece). Frankly, I’d take the company of the ignominious Roy clan over a date with Miss Maisel any day of the week. This season of “Succession” was filled with highlights from the year in T.V.: a family hunting trip that acted as a smokescreen for crippling acts of deception, a hostage situation that saw Matthew McFayden’s Tom Wambsgans at his absolute worst, Kendall’s unforgettable hip-hop-indebted dedication to his visibly disgusted father (“L to the OG,” indeed), the moronic Connor’s continually ill-fated attempts at launching a political campaign (almost too close to our current political reality to be funny), Shakespearean drama staged aboard opulent yachts, and perhaps the most well-placed use of a “but” in the history of a television show. Like it or not, “Succession” is a show for our fractured, divided here and now: one that implores us to look into the enemy’s eyes if we have any hopes of understanding what makes them tick. The most terrifying thing, perhaps, is the prospect of what we might see behind their affect-less gaze.
“Bojack Horseman” is still a work of dark-hearted, endlessly inventive animated majesty, even if the first abbreviated half of its final batch of episodes felt more like a glorified warm-up lap than a fully realized season of television (this season’s curiously flat finale also prevented it from being included in this list). Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s other show, “Undone,” was also a marvel: a trippy, rotoscoped dramatic fantasy about loss, anxiety, alienation, and the string of disappointments that can define one’s young adulthood. “Glow” managed to bounce back from a subpar second season with a dazzling third outing, while Damon Lindelof’s “Watchmen” boldly re-imagined the foremost motifs from Allen Moore’s seminal graphic novel in a characteristically idiosyncratic new fashion (in our current, ongoing conversations about whether or not this type of media can be considered artful, Lindelof’s strange and melancholic take on this material proves you can find a fresh way to approach material that has its roots in comic book culture).
“Tuca and Bertie” was such a lovely, pleasant show to watch that it came as a great letdown to learn that Netflix had canceled the show after just one season. “Documentary Now!” is still one of IFC’s standout shows, and the pair of episodes that follow Owen Wilson as a drug-addled, dim-witted guru in the vein of the unhinged cult leader from “Wild Wild Country” was one of the best standalone T.V. episodes of the year. “The Other Two” wittily skewered our current era of viral celebrity narcissism, while HBO’s “Silicon Valley” managed to play to its corrosive, ensemble-focused strengths in a standout final run (this season was worth it for Jared’s maniacal outbursts alone).
“Game of Thrones,” in spite of what the haters would have you believe, managed to deliver at least two or three series-best episodes in what might be the most hotly debated and divisive television season of the year. Elsewhere on the spectrum of polarization, Nicolas Winding Refn’s wildly uneven but undeniably alluring neo-Western/violence-as-pornography genre reconstruction “Too Old to Die Young” managed to (mostly) overcome the appalling, all-encompassing rot of its morally repugnant worldview with a surplus of the director’s arresting, neon-soaked trademark style.
And… that’s all I got for 2019, folks. Thanks for reading, and see you same time next year.
